You have to wonder about the appetite of some for biting the hand that's helped feed the Town of Barnstable's efforts to manage its growth.

That hand belongs to the Cape Cod Commission, which was created by the voters of this community and 14 others in the county to ensure a level of development review and regulatory armament to protect its natural and built resources.

Pooling the financial contributions of 15 towns through a special dedicated tax -- a restricted source of revenue that would no longer contribute to services to Barnstable if the town pulled out of the land-use agency -- the Commission has been a presence at the table when major projects are reviewed. It has exercised authority not available to individual municipalities to require mitigation of such development's effects on communities' water supply, traffic flow and other parameters.

Yet there are those, including some major business interests in Hyannis, who insist that the Commission is a misplaced anchor dragging the good ship Cape Cod toward the shoals of poverty. They see it as a major disincentive to their own growth and the ability of the region to attract more like-minded developers. Some recent news runs contrary to that assessment.

The Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce reports that Forbes magazine ranked the Town of Barnstable 42nd among the "Best Small Places for Business." Although the town scored a 176 for "cost of doing business," it came in 14th for "educational attainment" and 81st for "job growth."

That last figure dovetails nicely with a story in the Commission's latest newsletter that reports a review of data conducted by the agency's economic development officer, Leslie Richardson and research analyst Marilyn Fifield. They found, between 1994 and 2004, above-average job growth of 29.2 percent as contrasted with the state's 10 percent and the country's 14.9 percent. Other trends cited in their report include below-average unemployment for 2004 (4.8 percent in the county versus 5.2 in the state and 5.5 nationally) and above-average labor force and employment growth.

Wisely, the report recognizes one significant area in which the Cape's economy lags behind others: the size of its paychecks. The dismal news is that, in 2004, Cape Codders' average wage per job was $34,598 versus $48,916 in the state and $39.354 in the nation. Working people are making sacrifices to continue to live in a place they want to see protected.

This is not to say that growth is impossible here. A visit to downtown Hyannis provides evidence that the sleeping giant of Cape Cod's economy is shaking off its slumber, in part though creation of a growth incentive zone forged in years of negotiations between the town and the commission.

In fact, the problem with growth hereabouts may not be too much Cape Cod Commission but too little. Why haven't, for example, the powers that be at Independence Park sat down with the Commission and the town to develop a master plan for the property through a development agreement similar to that for Falmouth Technology Park? Such a step would provide greater confidence that the much-demanded Exit 6B (or 6 1/2, or 6.5, or what you will) won't have overdevelopment consequences when it unbottles the Park.

The Commission isn't going away. With the Town of Barnstable struggling to find staff sufficient to enforce already existing rules against overcrowding and, you might say, overparking in some neighborhoods, it doesn't make sense to throw away development review staff just because they sit in Barnstable Village and not on Main Street in Hyannis.

Giving the Cape Cod Commission sole blame for what's wrong with the local economy makes as much sense as praising it as our sole-source savior. It's a tool, a powerful one, that we shouldn't be afraid to use, with careful guidance from all of us, to shape the Cape we want.

EFM

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